Moral hazard driving early wildfire season again

Just a hundred and fifty years ago bison would be clearing the grasses driving early wildfire seasons.

In the last week, two wildfires have scorched acreage in Oklahoma and Kansas. Thanks to an unusually wet summer in 2017, plenty of grass grew in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma renewing those scorched acres but also growing an abundance of fuel for wildfires this winter and spring. The wind gusts so common to the High Plains can quickly turn a small fire into a large one.

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“The fires have been unprecedented in the state back to back record breaking years, in terms of large fire events,” says Battalion Chief Lane Pearman. “The fuels are changing. They are even changing here in Wichita and within Sedgwick County.”

Read that here.

John Thune (earth hater-SD) has rolled out his farm bill template for moral hazard and socialized agriculture while South Dakota's lone US House member and her fellow earth haters support it. Moral hazard is the flip side of self-reliance and the livestock industry knows emergency declarations will provide bailouts instead of burning off dry grasses minimizing losses.

Domestic livestock have contributed to catastrophic wildfire conditions and Republican welfare ranchers are the real ecoterrorists who hate subsidies unless they benefit from them.

Not talking about fuel treatments during a wildfire is the same thing as not talking about gun safety during a mass shooting.

The Wolf fire in southwest South Dakota was the largest blaze to occur during the month of March since the year 2000.

Had Sen. Tim Johnson been successful in passing S. 3310 as a part of the doomed Omnibus Wilderness Bill the land burned by the Cottonwood and Wolf fires would have been placed within the stewardship of Badlands National Park and much, if not all, of the federal land scorched by the Cottonwood Fire would have been burned off prescriptively in increments instead of being managed by some careless rancher or passing motorist.